A router system has a number of ingress ports that feed information, e.g., data packets to a switching fabric. The switching fabric then routes the information to egress routing ports. In such a system, typically the switching fabric on a per port basis has more bandwidth going into and out of the switch than is actually needed by the ports, such that typically there is more bandwidth capability feeding into an egress port than is feeding out of the egress port. Under these circumstances, queuing within that egress port can become very congested. The queues can fill up, and an intelligent mechanism is needed in order to manage those queues such that traffic is not dropped indiscriminately. In a system having multiple Quality of Service (QOS) levels, particular attention must be paid such that each level has its dedicated queuing space. Yet when the overall queuing space is not heavily utilized, it is desirable that the remaining queues can grow and use more space than they normally would be allotted.